This topic is one of my pet peeves. The only way I can ensure my isolations are accepted first time at Istock is not to mention the word isolation anywhere when I upload. All the isolations that I have had rejected for this reason have eventually been accepted through Scout but the process is long and laborious.

You may be interested in reading this thread though it offers no real solution.
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php/topic,1318.0.html

Hatman, I have uploaded 40 images to SV and I've had one sale....but I'm not happy with them at all.
I'm not ready to cancel my account with them just yet, but I'm not feeling inclined to upload any more of my portfolio there, mainly because they massacre the descriptions and keywords on my images so drastically that I fear sales potential there is very limited.
They remove all the keywords and add their own, so its pointless to even do your own keywording, and they even edit the descriptions!

And their keyword choices are questionable at best ....

It seems we are not entitled to have any say in how are images are promoted at SV, they know much better than we do how to sell our own product ... I realise that proper keywording is an important issue in microstock, but SnapVillage's approach just doesn't sit right with me.

Thanks David 

Actually I've been wondering what is going on at DT lately because suddenly my sales have been going up   

Ummm what does that all mean Laurin? That if anyone knows your email they can steal your money from Stockxpert? Or highjack your whole account? Sorry for the geriatric moment, but I don't understand ....

Thanks Hugh, at least I'm not the only one waiting longer than usual. I'll give 'em a couple more days and then maybe try contacting support ...

SS gets my stuff first always ... just because .... I like them   

... a crease, a spot, a stray fly.

lol

To the OP -
I use a sheet of white vinyl laid over, and up the wall behind, my bench and sheets of non-bleed art paper (it has no grain and gives relatively grain free shadows) to sit my subjects on. I bounce all my lighting off a white ceiling, in effect turning my whole spare bedroom studio into a giant soft box. In photoshop I use various methods of touchup depending on the subject, my favourite best and fastest I've found is to select the background with the select colour range tool and blast up the levels to get pure white. This method preserves the shadows best. Selecting the shadows and hitting the gaussian blur softens them nicely. Some subjects require pen tool selection, inversion and deleting the background with a white layer beneath. I don't like this method, its time consuming and if I want a shadow I have to create one but sometimes it unavoidable to get a clean isolation. (I also clone out the stray flys and dog hairs . Isolations are extremely saleable. Experimentation with what you have available is really the only way to learn, I'm still learning .... Best of luck and have fun.
Sandra

I don' t remember where that was, but in another thread, somebody says that the inspectors were not that picky when you don't use the keyword "isolation" for your image. So only if you actually call it to be isolated it has to be perfect.

I had the some problems with isolated objects at shutterstock, seems to be the same there. On istock I can't tell - just recently startet to isolate images and those are still waiting in my long long queue to upload.

I didn't see that thread but I did try not keywording the images as isolations or putting them in that category, just calling them white background. No difference, they still got rejected for poor isolation. Thats when I started pulling out my hair and contacted Scout. The point here is that the isolations are as perfect as possible with Jpeg compression, now if they would accept the files as tif there would be no problem, at least not until they compressed them to jpeg themselves.

If you're shooting on white and have your incamera white balance set correctly then why are you doing all the PS pen work? The only tools I use in PS for isolations are the clone tool (for imperfections in the subject) and the curves level to fix white balance when it is a little off. Other than that I just save as a jpeg and submit. I only have a few rejections of isolations and those are for trademark, etc.

I couldn't imagine putting in all the work to isolate using the pen tool.

Hi, I took a look at your portfolio at IS. Most of your isolations have backgrounds of various shades of graduated grey, and are not isolated on white. They are not really true isolations, but if you use the pen tool and create a true ffffff background it might boost your sales! Thats why I do all the work with a pen tool ... it makes the pics sell better

I guess many buyers still search according the best match search. My Theory is, when an image got a little downloads being new and only good to find by the "Age" search it moves up in the "best Match". If it gets no downloads it does not move up the "best match" search. Thats only a theory.
But I do have an image which is  quite new - 1-2 month. And it is my best seller together with an older image.

So ... does that mean that from now on, under the new IS system, any images that don't sell immediately are less likely to ever sell? They just get lost in the mix like on SS? That's disappointing to say the least 

Having seen the thread in the shutterstock forum about an image thief that made a bad job of cloning out the watermark, I am going to avoid SV until they improve theirs.  At the moment, it is just too easy to remove and then it is hard to know if a photo has been paid for. 

With some of my isolated objects, their watermark doesn't cover any of the subject.  That is not good enough.

yes I agree, it is not good enough. I sent them a note about the inadequacy of their watermark, they replied that they are considering changing it. Until they do I'm staying away ...

Quote from: Tomboy2290 on June 28, 2007, 17:30

My sales have increased too, which is very nice, but I have found that at least one of my older images has lost its keywords 

If you read their forum, there are posts there showing that keywords are still there, but somehow not seen at first - there is a trick to make them show. 

Sales were great today, although unfortunately on the smaller size only.  But I've had 2 and 3 credit sales in the past days.  In IS a good portion of my sales are the XS size also.

Regards,
Adelaide

Thanks Adelaide, what a good idea to check the forum at FT 

I guess we are just gonna have to cool our heels and wait for it all to be sorted.

Cheers
Sandra